Talks to end the 18-year-old conflict in Afghanistan may begin this month, sources said on Monday, a day after the U.S. special envoy visited the capital of neighbouring Pakistan and met Taliban leaders in Qatar.

Yet again, the Taliban has denied that foreign fighters, including members of Al Qaeda, are present in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s statement should raise deep concerns with U.S. officials about the group’s reliability to be an effective counterterrorism partner against Al Qaeda and other terror groups.

On June 12, 2020, at least four civilians, were killed in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack that occurred at Sher Shah Suri Mosque in the Kart-e-Char area of Kabul city in Kabul Province. The blast took place when people were offering Friday prayers, killing four worshippers, including the prayer leader Imam Maulavi Azizullah Mufleh.

U.S. envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has met with leaders of the Taliban in Qatar to review the implementation of a peace deal with the Islamist insurgency aimed at ending nearly two decades of Afghan conflict.

Afghan officials said Friday fresh fighting in the southern province of Zabul has killed at least 15 members of the security force and 12 Taliban insurgents.

U.S. forces carried out two sets of airstrikes against the Taliban, in western and southern Afghanistan, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday. Elsewhere in the south, the Taliban set off a roadside bomb and ambushed a police convoy, killing 10 Afghan policemen.

There are approximately 6,500 Pakistani terrorists operating in Afghanistan and Pak-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba facilitate the process of recruiting global terrorists into Afghanistan, a UN report stated.

Thousands of Pakistanis, including fighters from Pakistani proxies, continue to support the Taliban’s jihad against the Afghan government, according to a new report by a United Nations monitoring team. The report highlighted Pakistan’s double game of claiming to fight terrorism while backing terror groups that further its foreign policy goals.

A new United Nations report says that the Taliban assured al Qaeda that it would maintain their close links despite the “peace” deal with the organization which the Trump administration has touted as signifying a break between the Taliban and the terror group responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks.

A new report by a U.N. monitoring team casts further doubt on the supposed counterterrorism assurances made by the Taliban in its Feb. 29 withdrawal agreement with the U.S.